Jean Baptiste Audebert, a French painter and naturalist, born at Rochefort in 1759, died in 1800. He studied painting in Paris, and became distinguished for his miniature?. Having been employed to paint some specimens of natural history, he acquired an absorbing interest in the science. A journey through England and Holland furnished materials for a number of admirable designs, which appeared shortly afterward in Olivier's Histoire des in-sectes. The artist next prepared his Histoire naturelle des singes, des makis et des galeopi-theques (Paris, 1800), containing 16 colored plates, and showing an equal facility in the author as designer, engraver, and writer. The splendor of his coloring had never been equalled, and by certain ingenious processes, such as the application of gold leaf variously tinted, he was enabled to reproduce the most gorgeous plumage of birds and insects. His substitution of oils for water colors is also considered a great improvement in the art of animal illustration. His other works, Histoire generate des colibris, des oiseaux-mouches, des jacamars et des pro-merops (Paris, 1802), and Histoire naturelle des grimpereaux et des oiseaux de paradis, were published after his death, and are still among the most esteemed of their kind.